<p>Anti-gender rights “activists” in the United States are having a moment. Efforts to restrict women’s right to abortions began as early as 1821 and, despite two significant Supreme Court rulings in favour of abortion rights decades later—one in 1973 (in Roe v. Wade) and the other in 1992 (in Planned Parenthood v. Casey)—these “activists” didn’t lose hope. They kept trying until they finally succeeded in completely gutting that right in 2022, thanks to a ruling by the same apex court (in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization). What changed in the intervening period was the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative composition, thanks in part to the fact that during Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021), he nominated a record three associate justices to the Supreme Court, giving the conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe v. Wade.</p><p>In parallel, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, conservative groups increasingly targeted gay people with the express goal of restricting their legal rights to engage in same-sex conduct, marry, adopt children, and be free from social and legal discrimination. Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favour of legalising same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 (in Obergefell v. Hodges), it did so by a razor-thin margin of one vote—a margin that no longer exists today. Furthermore, the Obergefell ruling has not ensured that gay couples in America enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts due to a religious exemption carve-out embedded in the judgment. This carve-out has allowed the Court, in the years following Obergefell, to rule against gay couples in cases involving public accommodations’ refusal to serve gay couples on free speech and religious freedom grounds [in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023)].</p><p>With the federal right to abortion gone and same-sex marriage nearly settled law, the transgender community has become the new target for anti-gender rights “activists.” This is why one of Trump's first moves upon taking the presidency for the second time was issuing an executive order that aims, in no uncertain terms, to erase the very existence of transgender identity from the federal government's official lexicon. The executive order, signed on 20th January 2025, reads in part: “It is the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”</p>.Trump readies order for steep tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, China .<p><strong>Years-Long Crusade</strong></p><p>Trump’s attacks on transgender people go back several years. As early as May 2016, less than a year after Obergefell was decided, Trump began his assault on the community by vowing to rescind Obama-era federal directives aimed at protecting transgender people from discrimination in schools and healthcare. He did so while campaigning for what would eventually become his first presidency. During that time, Trump also stated that transgender people should be allowed to use whichever bathroom "they feel is appropriate"—a position he no longer endorses today.</p><p>He also turned his attention to the military, tweeting on 26th July 2017 that the United States would not "accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military." The ban was reversed by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office in 2021 through an executive order but was then, once again, reversed by Trump via another executive order on 20th January 2025, titled, in true Orwellian fashion, Prioritising Military Excellence and Readiness. This order states, very explicitly, that the only reason transgender people are unfit to serve in the military is because they are—transgender.</p><p>Scholars Christopher Pepin-Neff and Aaron Cohen have argued that by using Twitter to amplify his anti-transgender rhetoric and policy positions in the first term, Trump engineered a fake "moral panic" around the very existence of transgender Americans. This was done with the explicit goal of pushing transgender people back into the closet and relegating them to second-class citizenship. As Pepin-Neff and Cohen note:</p><p>"He used his platform as President to leverage Twitter as a tool that established national policy. Trump’s tweets were the vehicle to deliver a moral panic that made transgender Americans deviants outside of society. In short, Trump is responsible for a moral panic presidency."</p><p>And now, with Elon Musk and the rest of the "broligarchs" (billionaire, “tech-bro” oligarchs) on his side, his anti-transgender agenda continues with even stronger force.</p><p>Overall, not only is Trump's present “two-gender” policy blatantly discriminatory, it is also unscientific. His executive order defines “female” as: "A person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell."</p><p>However, all human foetuses' sex organs are identical at conception. It is only at six to seven weeks after conception that the Y chromosome typically expresses itself, triggering the development of testes. If the Y chromosome does not do this, the foetus will continue developing female genitalia. Therefore, to quote Amanda Yeo, the journalist who reported this story: "Basically, the early, default configuration of a human foetus is female. If we were to assign a sex at conception, as per Trump's executive order, all of them would be female." This is completely absurd.</p><p><strong>Where Things Stand Today</strong></p><p>Beyond the definitional problem with Trump’s “two-gender” policy, four other things about this executive order should concern transgender rights activists.</p><p>The first is the strategic deployment of "women’s safety" as a justification for curtailing transgender rights and excluding them from single-sex spaces, such as bathrooms. American Civil Liberties lawyer Shayna Medley debunks these fear tactics in a 2017 law review article by drawing parallels between anti-abortion legislation and anti-transgender legislation, noting, in part, that anti-transgender policies like these:</p><p>"Claim an interest in solving a safety problem that does not exist while simultaneously imposing grave health and safety risks on vulnerable populations."</p><p>Second, the current conservative-packed Supreme Court is already poised to rule against the transgender community in a significant case out of Tennessee involving a state law banning transgender minors from obtaining transition-related healthcare (United States v. Skrmetti). Therefore, any legal relief in favour of transgender rights from the top court is extremely unlikely.</p><p>Third, the executive order goes beyond throttling transgender rights by also instructing agency heads of various government departments to rescind all guidance documents that cover queer rights. These include, but are not limited to, resource manuals, toolkits, and briefs that cover gay, lesbian, and intersex people’s rights.</p><p>And finally, perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this executive order is the Democrats' seeming helplessness in all of this. As it stands today, Republicans control the White House and hold majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives (and some would argue, also control the Supreme Court, in addition to winning the popular vote). Therefore, public opinion, the law, and a majority of the political establishment are all pitted against the transgender community.</p><p>Close to one million Americans, therefore, now find themselves in the same place gay couples were in forty years ago and women seeking abortions were in for decades—in a lonely corner with little to no political support. This is a worrying time to be transgender in America and one can only hope for their safety and well-being as they ready themselves for what promises to be a hostile next four years.</p><p><em>(The author is a Communications Manager at Nyaaya, the Vidhi Centre for Legal Polic</em>y)</p>
<p>Anti-gender rights “activists” in the United States are having a moment. Efforts to restrict women’s right to abortions began as early as 1821 and, despite two significant Supreme Court rulings in favour of abortion rights decades later—one in 1973 (in Roe v. Wade) and the other in 1992 (in Planned Parenthood v. Casey)—these “activists” didn’t lose hope. They kept trying until they finally succeeded in completely gutting that right in 2022, thanks to a ruling by the same apex court (in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization). What changed in the intervening period was the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative composition, thanks in part to the fact that during Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021), he nominated a record three associate justices to the Supreme Court, giving the conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe v. Wade.</p><p>In parallel, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, conservative groups increasingly targeted gay people with the express goal of restricting their legal rights to engage in same-sex conduct, marry, adopt children, and be free from social and legal discrimination. Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favour of legalising same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 (in Obergefell v. Hodges), it did so by a razor-thin margin of one vote—a margin that no longer exists today. Furthermore, the Obergefell ruling has not ensured that gay couples in America enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts due to a religious exemption carve-out embedded in the judgment. This carve-out has allowed the Court, in the years following Obergefell, to rule against gay couples in cases involving public accommodations’ refusal to serve gay couples on free speech and religious freedom grounds [in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018) and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023)].</p><p>With the federal right to abortion gone and same-sex marriage nearly settled law, the transgender community has become the new target for anti-gender rights “activists.” This is why one of Trump's first moves upon taking the presidency for the second time was issuing an executive order that aims, in no uncertain terms, to erase the very existence of transgender identity from the federal government's official lexicon. The executive order, signed on 20th January 2025, reads in part: “It is the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”</p>.Trump readies order for steep tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, China .<p><strong>Years-Long Crusade</strong></p><p>Trump’s attacks on transgender people go back several years. As early as May 2016, less than a year after Obergefell was decided, Trump began his assault on the community by vowing to rescind Obama-era federal directives aimed at protecting transgender people from discrimination in schools and healthcare. He did so while campaigning for what would eventually become his first presidency. During that time, Trump also stated that transgender people should be allowed to use whichever bathroom "they feel is appropriate"—a position he no longer endorses today.</p><p>He also turned his attention to the military, tweeting on 26th July 2017 that the United States would not "accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military." The ban was reversed by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office in 2021 through an executive order but was then, once again, reversed by Trump via another executive order on 20th January 2025, titled, in true Orwellian fashion, Prioritising Military Excellence and Readiness. This order states, very explicitly, that the only reason transgender people are unfit to serve in the military is because they are—transgender.</p><p>Scholars Christopher Pepin-Neff and Aaron Cohen have argued that by using Twitter to amplify his anti-transgender rhetoric and policy positions in the first term, Trump engineered a fake "moral panic" around the very existence of transgender Americans. This was done with the explicit goal of pushing transgender people back into the closet and relegating them to second-class citizenship. As Pepin-Neff and Cohen note:</p><p>"He used his platform as President to leverage Twitter as a tool that established national policy. Trump’s tweets were the vehicle to deliver a moral panic that made transgender Americans deviants outside of society. In short, Trump is responsible for a moral panic presidency."</p><p>And now, with Elon Musk and the rest of the "broligarchs" (billionaire, “tech-bro” oligarchs) on his side, his anti-transgender agenda continues with even stronger force.</p><p>Overall, not only is Trump's present “two-gender” policy blatantly discriminatory, it is also unscientific. His executive order defines “female” as: "A person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell."</p><p>However, all human foetuses' sex organs are identical at conception. It is only at six to seven weeks after conception that the Y chromosome typically expresses itself, triggering the development of testes. If the Y chromosome does not do this, the foetus will continue developing female genitalia. Therefore, to quote Amanda Yeo, the journalist who reported this story: "Basically, the early, default configuration of a human foetus is female. If we were to assign a sex at conception, as per Trump's executive order, all of them would be female." This is completely absurd.</p><p><strong>Where Things Stand Today</strong></p><p>Beyond the definitional problem with Trump’s “two-gender” policy, four other things about this executive order should concern transgender rights activists.</p><p>The first is the strategic deployment of "women’s safety" as a justification for curtailing transgender rights and excluding them from single-sex spaces, such as bathrooms. American Civil Liberties lawyer Shayna Medley debunks these fear tactics in a 2017 law review article by drawing parallels between anti-abortion legislation and anti-transgender legislation, noting, in part, that anti-transgender policies like these:</p><p>"Claim an interest in solving a safety problem that does not exist while simultaneously imposing grave health and safety risks on vulnerable populations."</p><p>Second, the current conservative-packed Supreme Court is already poised to rule against the transgender community in a significant case out of Tennessee involving a state law banning transgender minors from obtaining transition-related healthcare (United States v. Skrmetti). Therefore, any legal relief in favour of transgender rights from the top court is extremely unlikely.</p><p>Third, the executive order goes beyond throttling transgender rights by also instructing agency heads of various government departments to rescind all guidance documents that cover queer rights. These include, but are not limited to, resource manuals, toolkits, and briefs that cover gay, lesbian, and intersex people’s rights.</p><p>And finally, perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this executive order is the Democrats' seeming helplessness in all of this. As it stands today, Republicans control the White House and hold majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives (and some would argue, also control the Supreme Court, in addition to winning the popular vote). Therefore, public opinion, the law, and a majority of the political establishment are all pitted against the transgender community.</p><p>Close to one million Americans, therefore, now find themselves in the same place gay couples were in forty years ago and women seeking abortions were in for decades—in a lonely corner with little to no political support. This is a worrying time to be transgender in America and one can only hope for their safety and well-being as they ready themselves for what promises to be a hostile next four years.</p><p><em>(The author is a Communications Manager at Nyaaya, the Vidhi Centre for Legal Polic</em>y)</p>